Saturday, October 22, 2016

Aisha Buhari and the Evil Aso Rock Cabal

Mrs. Aisha Buhari bucked tradition by openly criticizing the
political appointments in her husband’s government. There is no precedent for
this in Nigeria’s entire history. In fact, I know of no parallel in the world
for a First Lady (or Wife of the President) to openly disagree with her husband
through a foreign media outlet.

This can only mean that although Aisha is formally married to
President Buhari, she is actually isolated from him. This is consistent with
what I’ve heard from inside sources about the relationship between the first
couple. Buhari is held hostage by an evil, sneaky, corrupt, vulturous, and conniving
cabal that ensures that his wife doesn’t see him even in the “kitchen,” the
“living room,” or “the other room.”

The BBC interview was
Aisha’s vigorous ventilation of pent-up anguish against a cold, calculating,
and corrupt cabal that has made Buhari a stranger to his own wife.

A few months ago, a close Buhari aide who was unnerved by my all-out,
no-holds-barred criticism of this government (which was inspired by my
realization that this government is an elaborate anti-people fraud) called to
assure me that Buhari hadn’t abandoned the pro-poor posture that endeared him
to many of us. He said Buhari personally disagreed with the recent petrol price
hike, the “floating” of the naira, the removal of subsidies on fertilizer, and
other anti-people policies that have become the signature of this
administration. He called my attention to the fact that the president always
travels out of the country each time these atrociously pigheaded decisions are
announced.

A few days after our conversation, as if to confirm what the
presidential source told me privately, Buhari publicly disagreed with the
devaluation of the naira. “How much benefit can we derive from this ruthless
devaluation of the naira?” he told business leaders who paid him a visit in the Presidential Villa on June 27,
2016. “I'm not an economist neither a businessman - I fail to appreciate what
is the economic explanation."

As I told my informant, this is terribly worrying. If Buhari is
personally uncomfortable with the decisions that have come to define his own
administration, it clearly indicates that he isn’t in control. It means he is a
puppet controlled by inept, no-good puppeteers.

But like most Buhari aides, my informant believes Buhari is
metaphysically held captive by a potent, disabling evil spell that causes him
to be easily susceptible to the wiles and devious manipulations of a vicious
cabal in Aso Rock. He said efforts are being made to exorcise this spell. But
that’s superstitious nonsense.

Buhari is simply an
infirm leader who cherishes and rewards loyalty even at the expense of truth,
justice, fair play— and the nation. Yet, scores of his supporters go into overdrive
to defend the policies of his government because they believe in him and
imagine that all the policies churned out by this government have his
imprimatur. Many of them would even
justify and defend their own murder by Buhari if they have the chance to
reincarnate to tell the story.

This is the context that instigated Aisha Buhari’s unusual media
outburst. When you are denied access to your husband, when your husband is held
prisoner by a malevolent, shadowy, and predatory cabal, you can’t help but lash
out through the most potent means available to you.

So before you talk of the unprecedentedness of Aisha’s critique
of her husband’s government, also remember the unprecedentedness of her
husband’s critique of his own government, which clearly indicates his
alienation from his own government.

But let’s not be deceived into thinking that
Mrs. Buhari is worried about the fate of everyday Nigerians whom her husband’s
puppet government is killing piecemeal. She is fighting a personal battle of
self-preservation. She is piqued that she is excluded from partaking in the rampant
and unrestrained nepotism of this government.

As I pointed out in a
recent viral Facebook status update, most disillusioned Buhari supporters don’t
care whether the president’s appointees are personally known to him or his wife—or
whether or not they campaigned or voted for him. They are worried, instead,
that many, perhaps most, of the president’s appointees are corrupt and
incompetent, but are shielded from any consequences for their corruption and
incompetence because of their loyalty to the president.

Let’s start from the president’s first major
appointments: Secretary to the Government of the Federation Lawal David Babachir
is nicknamed “Cash and Carry” in government circles for a reason. Here is a man
who once publicly bragged about receiving monetary gifts from the Ebonyi State
governor. He has also been implicated in the N270 million
"grass-cutting" contract scandal for internally displaced Boko Haram
victims.

The Chief of Staff to
the President has been accused of accepting a half-billion-naira bribe from MTN
to reduce the telecom company's NCC fine from N1.04 trillion to N330 billion,
among other allegations of sordid, avaricious sleaze against him. And the man
is incompetent and lazy, to boot. It’s the same story all around members of the
president's “kitchen cabinet.”

It took Buhari 6 months to appoint his ministers
who have turned out to be the most underwhelming cast of characters to ever be
in the Federal Executive Council. Among them is a minister of budget who
doesn’t know Nigeria’s debt profile; a minister of agriculture (who, tellingly,
is a former PDP chairman) who thinks the cost of rice is high because Nigerians
consume too much rice; a minister of science and technology whose technological
vision for the country is to start local pencil production in two years; a
compulsively lying and comically foul-mouthed minister of information who says dressing
and undressing masquerades is a strategy of job creation; a minister of youth
and sports who is so incredibly clueless he makes you want to cry; a backward,
prehistoric minister of communication who wants to tax Nigerians for calls they
make and texts they send; a minister of Niger Delta Affairs who was indicted
for fraud by a government commission in the 1990s but still keeps his job even
in the wake of this revelation; a minister of finance who hides her
incompetence behind a Cockney accent. The list goes on.

Add that to the revelations of a series of
secretive, illegal employment of the children and relatives of high-ranking
political elites in this government, including Buhari’s, while millions of
brilliant, hardworking but underprivileged people vegetate in misery amid a
biting recession, and you know that Nigeria is wildly adrift. Neither the
president nor his ministers have a clue. And they don’t care.

If this trend
continues, by the end of 2019, Buhari would be so unpopular that he would be
chased out of Aso Rock with rocks by millions of his own erstwhile supporters.
Aisha Buhari obviously doesn't want this terrible fate to befall her husband. I
don't, too.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.